


The Lemon is in Play

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:13:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8015395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve takes a dim view when the team want to play games on missions. <br/>They don't take an awful lot of notice ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lemon is in Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leftennant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftennant/gifts).



“No.”

“Oh come on, Steve.” Sam whined from his position on the couch. The Captain was stood in the middle of the common room, directly between the living area and the kitchen space. The team were spread across both areas, and all of them were getting on his last nerve. 

“Absolutely not, Sam.” He said, wondering when it was that his team had turned into the sort of people that had to have this stuff explained to them. “We’re professionals. We’re coming off the back of the Accords right now, and everything that happened with that, and we need the world at large to view us as credible.”

“But-”

“Sam, no. You can’t play stupid games on a mission, where people can see you, and be taken seriously.” Steve accompanied his words with the patented Captain-America-knows-what-you’re-up-to-and-guess-what?-he-disapproves look. He’d been using it since the war and it tended to work. At least on everyone who wasn’t Bucky Barnes, who’d known Steve since the year dot and was less than impressed with it. Sam settled back into the couch with a mutinous look on his face but a thankfully closed mouth. Steve allowed himself a small exhale of victory and turned on his heel to-

“You do remember that we dressed up as women that time in 1944? To infiltrate that HYDRA base? And then you had get on stage in Peggy’s-”

“Buck.” Steve’s voice was strained. “Not the time, or the place.”

“That’s what Colonel Phillips said, if I recall.” Bucky said under his breath, and Steve shot him a pointed look. The other man threw him back a lazy wink that matched the sly grin on his face, and Steve made a mental note to flatten him later in the gym. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he turned back once more to Sam - giving the rest of the team a cursory sweep as he moved - and took a deep breath. 

“Play whatever orange-based-”

“It’s a lemon, Steve-”

“-I don’t care if it’s a fucking pineapple with a bow on it, Sam, you’re not playing games on my mission. Do it on your own time.”

“Said no, did he?” Barton asked as he slid into the last empty stool at the breakfast bar, just catching the last of Steve’s speech. Natasha slid him over her plate of toast, and Barton snagged a piece, shoving it into his mouth folded. Steve rolled his eyes, raised a hand with his mouth open, then clearly thought better of it. He left without another word. 

“What is this game?” Scott asked, confused, as Steve’s back disappeared from view. 

“The travelling lemon.” Barton and Natasha chorused together, and the dark haired man took a step back. 

“We used to play it on missions all the time.” Natasha explained, drawing one knee up onto the stool she was perched on, and resting her coffee cup on it, both hands wrapped around the mug. 

“You do enough of them, it gets boring after a while.” Barton shrugged beside her, carefully folding another piece of toast in half before shoving it into his mouth. “We found a way to make it interesting.” He mumbled his way around it, spraying crumbs as he spoke. 

“You two… Found espionage boring enough that you felt the need to introduce a travel game?” Scott asked slowly, looking from them to Sam, who grinned from the couch. 

“We’ve been on a lot of missions, Lang.” Natasha said, with a small smile. 

“Coulson had a whole pay scale based around the points system.” Barton said wistfully, pouring a glass of orange juice with a far off look in his eye. “Now there was a man who understood the intricacies of mission-based gaming.”

“Eye spy gets a little repetitive.” Natasha added, snagging the orange juice from Barton and taking a long gulp before sliding it back across to him. 

“You’re telling me.” Said Scott, sourly. 

“Cassie?” Barton said sympathetically, thinking on his own kids. Cooper and Lila had driven him crazy just driving to the store and back one summer. There just wasn’t enough stuff on the road in the midwest to keep that game interesting. Scott shook his head. 

“Luis. So what is this citrus based game of champions?”

“It’s very simple.” Barton began, setting his half-empty glass on the counter. “The first person has the lemon, and secretes it somewhere during the first half of the mission. The second person then has to locate and retrieve said lemon, with no one being the wiser.”

“For multiple players you just do as many passes as you can manage during the length of the mission.” Natasha explained further. “What’s our record again?”

“Thirty four.” Barton answered. “But that was during the Battle of New York, and it did go on a bit.”

“That’s right.” Natasha nodded to herself. “But I did score double points for planting it on Loki. Even Fury agreed that was a master play.”

Barton grumbled something under his breath that was hard to catch, but might have been something along the lines of no-fair-if-I-have-to-play-from-a-rooftop-and-you’re-in-the-middle-of-the-action. 

“And you really actually play this?” Scott said, dropping himself into the couch next to Sam and giving the pair a disbelieving look. 

“Please.” Barton scoffed. “We were playing it at the airport in Germany.”

“No way.” Scott said immediately. “I call bullshit. I saw approximately no lemons. And you guys were on different sides.”

“You’re not supposed to see the lemon.” Natasha countered. “And in lemon warfare, you’re always on opposite sides.”

“So that’s why you had us stop off and pick up a crate of lemons.” Sam said, turning to Barton with a dawning look of comprehension creeping across his face. “We had, like, no room in that car. Ask Barnes.”

Bucky nodded sullenly from his perch on the breakfast bar. 

“So, we’re on?” Barton asked brightly, and the rest of the team - save Natasha, who was concentrating on what was left of her coffee - glanced at each other. 

“Well, Steve said-”

Barton made a rude noise. “C’mon. It’s a game. What’s the worst that could happen?”

\--------

“Did you want lemon with that?” Barton winked as he leaned across the bar towards the man he was serving. Undercover missions were his favourite. Especially when they involved alcohol. 

“Uh, no?” The man answered, confused. He looked down at his drink and then back up at Barton on the other side of the bar, dish cloth slung over his shoulder. “It’s a pint of beer?” 

“Hey man, the customer is always right.” Barton said, putting his hands up. “I’ll just take that in which case, seeing as you don’t want it.” He leaned across the bar and plucked a small yellow fruit from the guy’s front jacket pocket. 

\--------

An arrow thudded into the wall by the side of Sam, splitting the lemon open, the juice running down the wall. Sam sighed. “Yeah, Barton, you win this round.”

“We really playing this game with a dude who calls himself Hawkeye?” He muttered to Scott down the comms line. “Seems like we’re setting ourselves up for a fall here.”

“You knew it before you started.” Came the cheerful reply from the man in question, and Sam groaned again. 

\--------

The lemon rolled towards their feet over the Quinjet floor. Natasha followed shortly behind it, dropping into the spare seat with all the elegance and grace that she usually afforded. 

“The vents, Clint?” She asked. He grinned. 

“Don’t mess with the classics.”

\---------

“What’s this?” Darcy asked as she picked a lemon out of the middle of Jane’s latest science experiment. Glancing over at the woman in question, who was half an hour deep into some equation on her whiteboard and no longer on the same plane of existence, she shrugged and put it back.

Who knew? Could be an integral part of it, for all she was aware. Best not to fiddle.

\----------

“Is it against the rules for Lang to shrink the lemon? I feel like it should be.” 

Sam tossed the lemon toward Barton, who caught it one-handed and regarded the somewhat bruised fruit seriously. Beside Sam, there was a zapping sound and Scott appeared full-sized next to the man. 

“There’s - nothing - in - the - rules -” He panted, doubled over. “About - the - structural - integrity - of - the - lemon - in - play.” 

Barton shrugged, and tossed it back to Sam. 

“Man’s got a point.” He said. “Looks like Lang takes the field on this one, Wilson.”

\-----------

“We, uh, need a new lemon.” Bucky said sheepishly, opening his metal palm to show the remains of the previous one, smeared all over it. Natasha glanced at it, and raised an eyebrow. “Lang hid it on the inside of Steve’s shield-”

“Nice.” Barton said approvingly, from the cockpit. Lang mimed an enthusiastic high five that the archer couldn’t see. 

“-And we both went for it at the same time.” Barnes finished. 

“And someone-” Wilson said pointedly, arms folded and sending Barnes a cold look. “Doesn’t know how to moderate his strength.”

“Oh, please.” Bucky said, turning to the other man. “You were in a goddamn nose dive-”

\--------

“Does someone want to explain that?” Steve asked, blue eyes seething as he pointed to the tv screen behind them. The team, as a one, silently shook their heads. Scott looked at his feet, Sam looked just over Steve’s left shoulder because he learned that one in the army and it’s never left him, Natasha on the other hand stared straight at him with more than a hint of challenge to it. 

“I specifically said-”

“Technically, by that point, it was lemonade.” Scott piped up, as the rolling news footage began again, and the offending fruit was shown in all its glory, crushed under the Iron Man suit as Tony took a hit to the chest and bounced backwards. The juice squirted enthusiastically under the weight of the suit and the man inside. 

“Nah, you can’t make lemonade without sugar.” Barton interjected, shaking his head. “No one makes lemonade without sugar.”

“The 1930s did.” Bucky countered. “You guys put sugar in everything, it’s disgusting.”

“Is that what you give your name as at Starbucks?” Natasha asked with a raised eyebrow. “Sugar is disgusting, please ensure my venti caramel macchiato is entirely sugar-free?”

“Don’t think I don’t recognise a deflection strategy when I see one.” Steve snapped, turning on his heel and striding from the room. 

“So you think he-”

“Nope, not a clue.”

The team stared up at tv screen, where Steve was addressing the reporter, clad in his full Captain America regalia … A lemon taped to his helmet.


End file.
